The Words He Doesn't Say
by Medie
Summary: It's all in what they don't say. BeckettMcKay


Title: "The Words He Doesn't Say"

Author: M

Rating: PG13 for slashy proximity

Thanks: To marag for a beta! Speed Beta I tell you

Pairing: Beckett/McKay

Warnings: No spoilers that I can think of. It's all wonderfully ambigious.

Summary: It's all in what they don't say.

Note: The story's written for zortified and the request was: Carson/Radek or Carson/Rodney with Plot over PWP so...Plot!

Should say it's my first time writing Beckett/McKay. Never thought I would but...it was quite enjoyable. G

"The Words He Doesn't Say"  
by M.

The whole thing was a bloody mess. Unfortunately for Carson Beckett, that was not only an expletive to describe the situation. It was the situation. A four-hour surgery stitching up the better part of John Sheppard's innards had left him shell-shocked and weary. The worst of it all was the fact that no sooner had he announced himself done with that particular project - and commended his errant Major into the hands of the oh-so-eager nursing staff - than Ford and Teyla had rushed in with his next patient.

The particularly hard to locate Rodney McKay. His particularly hard to locate Rodney McKay.

The particularly hard to locate Rodney McKay who had a tendency to hog the covers and gave off enough body heat to warm up the entire city...soaked in the blood of his teammates. A fact not easily discerned by the casual observer.

Which was why, in Carson's mind, it was perfectly all right to examine him thoroughly and fuss and fidget all the way back to their quarters.

Rodney was injured. Rodney'd been lost on a world for hours. A world in the midst of a Wraith attack with dozens of the ugly buggers crawling about doing who knew what to him...

Mind you, when Teyla and Ford had found him, he'd only a scratch and a twist of a knee. A little disinfectant and bandaging was all it'd taken to put Rodney back to rights but that didn't much matter to Carson. Not when he'd spend the entire time in surgery fighting to keep his patient alive and fighting to keep his sanity intact. It was hard enough performing delicate surgery, harder still when one's fighting the realization that the most important person in one's life might be lying on an alien world bleeding to death.

Being a doctor was something he'd always been proud of. All his life. He was a healer as much as he was a doctor and it defined his existence. He healed as much as he breathed and the idea of being unable to heal...that drove him right round the bend and back again. The idea that Rodney might be beyond his reach, permanently beyond his reach, now that was almost too much for any man to take.

The sight of a complaining, grousing and generally Rodney-ish Rodney limping through the door, supported by his teammates...there'd never been a sight so wonderful. Not to Carson's reckoning and he'd seen more than his fair share of miraculous sights. It almost made up for the bloody mess that had been the entire day.

The images which decorated the backs of his eyelids every time they slid shut.

"You're doing it again." Rodney grumbled into his shoulder. "Stop it."

"Stop what then?" he asked in a barely audible voice, surprised to find the bear awake but not surprised at his typical grouchiness. "I'm just lyin' here attemptin' to get a night's sleep in. Hardly an easy feat, I might add, with you crowdin' the bed like the other side's gonna swallow you whole."

"I am not crowding the bed," his lover protested automatically. "The Ancients were clearly very, very small people. Their beds are vastly undersized."

"They're just fine and you bloody well know it." As soon as the words were out, Carson wished them back. The edge in his words was hard to miss even for Rodney who, bless his heart, could be as self-involved as the rest of them. More so if he really put his mind to it. He wasn't good at dealing with this and, worse yet, Rodney wasn't all good at dealing with anyone who wasn't good at dealing with this. "A fine pair we are," he muttered aloud.

Strangely enough, Rodney surprised him with an understanding of the unspoken words which came between the two statements. "Proof there's somebody for everybody," he agreed, surprising Carson further still with a reassuring rub of his arm. "But..." Words failed him and he fumbled about for a bit. For a man with such a famed intellect, he never knew what to say and Carson knew full well he didn't.

"It's no matter Rodney," the doctor assured quietly. "I know what you're tryin' to say. Really I do." Which he did. He understood just how at a loss Rodney was to fix what was going on in his head. He understood just how much he wanted to fix it. For all his apparent self-involvement, Rodney was good people and he was Carson's good people. He shifted his body, driving Rodney backward onto the bed more and turning to lean back. "How's the knee? You really shouldn't be here, if I've said that once I've said it a thousand times, you need to be in the infirmary and resting up good and proper."

"It's fine." The other man responded automatically, awkwardly accepting the unspoken concerns which went deeper than the fussing vocalized by the Scotsman. "I'm flying appropriately high on the medication du jour and even if the bed's too hard and you're crushing my arm...I'm still fine."

He was still alive. Still with him. Carson wasn't alone and he wasn't about to be for quite some time. Not if Rodney McKay had anything to say about it.

Funny how they had these conversations without ever actually having the conversations. They were both masters at it in their way. Carson not nearly so much as Rodney but he was learning. He had to, all things being equal. If Rodney didn't want to talk about it, Carson wasn't about to be a nag and push the issue. At least not that issue. "You're sure about the knee?"

"Yes, Carson." Rodney responded in his infamous 'you're being an idiot and I am a massively influential genius' tone which, naturally, had next to no effect on him. "I am very sure. Just like I was before we went to bed, just like I was when you slapped that godawful ointment on it."

"That's my Granny's ointment, so mind your tongue," Carson warned. "And it's served me just fine and you, I might add, given how much you end up needing it."

Speaking of unspoken conversations.

Rodney sighed, a huff of hot breath against his shoulder, and Carson could almost hear the sound of his eyes rolling. He kept that up and he was going to land himself eye strain. A rather mediocre addition to an impressive list of injuries. "Perhaps I just love the decor of the infirmary. The staff isn't entirely useless either - for the most part."

"Just couldn't let that one go, now could you?" The other man groused, trying to hide the grin stealing across his face as the normalcy of the moment seeped the tension from the room. "You jus' can't admit you like bein' around me."

"I have never said I didn't," Rodney argued, the innocence in his voice working about as well with Carson as it had on his grandmother, having caught her a five-year-old grandson with one of her famous chocolate chip and oatmeal cookie in his hands. "I think it's fairly obvious I enjoy your company."

"When we're clothed?" Carson questioned sharply in a tone that wasn't sharp at all. "Clothed and in public with no bodily fluids' bein' exchanged? Quite another situation entirely now isn't it?"

"Well, not particularly." Hedging the issue, the unspoken conversation still going strong and carrying the undertone messages, the Canadian took his time thinking up an answer. A time which carried a multitude of reassurances. The soft rhythm of breath being drawn and released, the rough feel of one leg rubbing up and down over another, the heat of bodies radiated back and forth. "We exchange...other things."

Aye, and that they did. Secretive looks which weren't so secretive, comments, and snipes and all the things which they pretended no one noticed...the things everyone pretended not to see. They exchanged plenty. And for all they said and all they proclaimed, most of the real communication had nothing to do with what words they used.

Fine thing too, since each barely understood half of what the other was talking about half the time. If it wasn't for their unspoken words, they'd've understood nothing at all. At least this way they understood some of it.

The important parts at least.

"True enough, Rodney," Carson sighed out. "True enough, we do at that..."

And they did, and it was fine by them.

finis


End file.
